http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/arts/music/30crossovers.html?ref=artsFOR months now, the acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming, her recording company and her public relations agency have been working hard to make one thing clear: “Dark Hope,” her new Decca recording of indie rock songs, is not a crossover project.
Crossover! Heaven forbid! To many classical music critics and tradition-minded artists, the commercial crossover projects in the last two decades are sure signs, in the words of the esteemed British baritone Thomas Allen, that “well-organized hijackers” and “money-grabbing, P.R.-led” marketers are using “wet T-shirted” violinists to — horror or horrors — sell classical records.
Whew. No wonder Ms. Fleming is at pains to distinguish “Dark Hope” from crossover. But what is crossover exactly?
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Ms. Fleming and her handlers are being curiously sheepish about her legitimate accomplishments on this album. Vocally she has turned herself into an indie rock singer: from the opening track, the Muse song “Endlessly” (available since March as a single on iTunes), she sounds more like Annie Lennox than “America’s favorite soprano,” as she has long been billed. I would not have guessed that this was Renée Fleming from the hushed, breathy, deep-set singing captured here.
So why the defensiveness? In concept there is nothing wrong with artists from one genre performing music from another. And classical crossover has an honorable history, dating from the early decades of recording, when Caruso made as much money from his hit recordings of popular songs like “For You Alone” and “Over There” (George M. Cohan’s rally-the-home-front song during World War I) as from arias like “La donna è mobile” and “Vesti la giubba.”
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